Pink Couscous – “A story about friendship”

Little Tribute to a person who I’d like to call a friend and a little story about living abroad.

So what does this have to do with pink couscous? Well, more with couscous than with the pink. So when I, Claire came to Angers I found myself have to rent “blindly” into a huge collocation. I have five other roommates with whom I live in a gigantic city house and I fell in love right away. All of them are really strong characters which enriched me and made me spent quite a fantastic student time. Evenings of drinking wine, dancing and playing with all the weird stuff that is lying around. The house is full of history from everyone who has lived here and left some stuff, but I could talk about this house and how it is to live here for hours. Ask me if you want to know the little stories if you want to in-person 😉

So, the thing with living abroad, and especially for only half a year at one place is : Finding friends. The question to ask is: “When can I call someone a friend?”

I find the word friendship very intimate and sacred, so for me, it is quite personal to call someone a friend. Simon one of my collocs had a nice definition for me

He calls someone a friend whom you can call and ask to do something without an excuse to do so. So just calling saying: “hi, do you want to do something ?” and the other person asks “what do you want to do?” and you can simply reply “I don’t know, just nothing”.

I found that a pretty legit definition. It implicates that you can just be with someone without demanding something, just enjoying their company and their energy.

For me personally, I am very sensitive as well as impulsive when it comes to friendship. Sometimes it’s the time that you have spent with someone or the experiences that bind together. For example, I would call all of my fellow student’s friends. We have gone through so much, also intimate, as we are such a small group and have experienced a lot together which made us mature so much and bind us for a lifetime. You need a family when you are always traveling, always “loose” the place and people which you could call home for a short period of time.

On the other hand, there is this energy. This pull – that you feel when you get to know people and you just exchange some sentences, see them be and sense their spirit and feel “okay, I want to be with these people” without really being able to explain why. Even before you get to know them better you feel that you are on the same “wave” and that you could enrich the other person’s life and vice versa. You feel at ease when you are with them and you feel the urge to get to know them and want to be recognized by them and vice versa – to “see” you. It may sound weird, but for me personally, it’s like falling in love. The people who know me and that I call “friends” know that when I meet those people I am simply exactly like being in love. I talk about the people that I felt this energy with. This is when the tricky part for me comes in. These feelings are intimate and as you don’t really know those people you especially don’t want to cage them or make them feel uncomfortable with your own feelings. You simply want to let them feel at ease and that’s also how I want to feel. So I always was really slow with the word friendship. “When is it the right moment to say that you are a friend?”.

And here comes in the living abroad for such a small time – thing in. I know that I will move, I will leave those people, not capable of building up a trustful friendship. You just enter and leave and since I have experienced this now it made me think. I feel that I want to keep the people with whom I connected to be a haven, like a light that I keep shining all over the places that I have traveled, so in the end, the globe is full of those lights. Of people who I found incredible, inspiring and just amazing creatures which I spent time and connected deeply although not having to have enough time to develop a deep friendship, just because of time and distance.

So again, what does this have to do with couscous ?? Well, it makes me feel a little strange to say this as this is an open platform and the internet and this is quite something personal. ! But I am sharing this story because I think this applies to all of us, in a society which lets us share so much personal but also lose the trust into friendship and really put yourself in such a vulnerable stage which is called “friendship” and I talk about the relationship in which you are giving yourself and share your thoughts and feelings without restriction and putting the trust on the other person to handle your words with love and honesty. I feel that our generation really has some issues with this. So this is why I share my own story behind this.

At one of the first evenings, I got to know some friends of the collocation and we had an amazing dinner and game time together. I got to know this couple, I won’t mention their names 😉 But I think they know that I am talking about them when they read it. So here is my confession. I right away felt their energy and in the time that we got to know each other we had incredible connecting conversations and even if they were little I already feel like a friendship could develop from this. This evening she also showed me her special way of making super delicious couscous which I am sharing with you all today.

You will always be a light that I will leave in France. You are incredible, beautiful people that I am so grateful to be able to meet and spent time with. You are inspiring and I wish you all the best in the world, so hopefully, we see each other again!

The simple message behind this is “listen to what your heart is telling you and don’t be afraid to try and connect and be open. Friendship is not about the time that you have spent together it’s not expecting the other person to be anything else than themselves or to give you anything else than honesty.”

Spread some lights around the world. They will open it for you.

Pink Couscous – Truefoodsblog

How you do it:

1. Put the Couscous into a big Bowl with a fitting lit.

2. Start heating the beet Juice with the water mixed with all spices, salt, and pepper and bring it to a boil.

3. Pour it over the couscous and stir quickly, closing it with the lit and let this soak for 5 minutes without opening the lit.

4. Now heat a pan with olive oil and add the couscous and stir and let it get crispy.

5. Now mix it with lemon juice and zest, the fresh herbs and roasted nuts and seeds aftertaste.

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